Annual Review 2021–22
Contents
- About this Annual Review
- Year at a glance
- Acknowledgement of country
- Board Chair message
- Chief Executive Officer and Chief Ombudsman message
- Organisational overview
- AFCA Independent Review
- Complaints
- Who complained to AFCA?
- Overview of complaints
- Open cases
- Closed cases
- Banking and finance complaints
- Buy now pay later
- Financial difficulty complaints
- Scams
- Small business complaints
- General insurance complaints
- Significant events
- Life insurance complaints
- Superannuation complaints
- Investments and advice complaints
- Cryptocurrency
- Complaints lodged by consumer advocates and financial counsellors
- Legacy complaints
- Complaints outside AFCA’s Rules
- Systemic issues
- Code compliance and monitoring
- Previous schemes
- Engagement, awareness and accessibility
- Corporate information
- AFCA General Purpose Financial Report 2021–22
- Appendix 1
- Glossary
Open cases
As at 30 June 2022, AFCA had 17,826 open cases. Over half (54%) of these open cases were less than 60 days old. Twelve per cent of open cases were over a year old.
The age of open cases is impacted by a number of factors. These include the referral back timeframe (the time an AFCA member is allowed to initially respond to the complaint, including the number of complaints the financial firm is permitted to resolve through internal dispute resolution), which varies from 21 to 90 days depending on the product and/or issues raised by the complaint.
In 2021–22, 12% of open cases were over 365 days old. The majority of these cases (77%) related to complaints that we are unable to progress due to insolvency or litigation through the courts, such as the Business Interruption Test case. Other factors that impacted the age of cases included the continuing resolution of legacy cases and CIO cases, and the need to provide more time for vulnerable consumers when resolving their complaints.
For complex complaints that can take beyond 365 days, we have reduced the age profile from 4% of open cases on 30 June 2021 to 2.4% on 30 June 2022.
AFCA is aware that timeliness is a key aspect of a fair process and has implemented a series of efficiency initiatives designed to deliver the fastest pathway to resolution.
These initiatives include the development of specialist teams, strengthened workflow management and triage mechanisms, the use of merits assessments earlier in our process, enhanced exception reporting, aged file prioritisation, key performance indicators for timeliness and enhanced communication to keep parties informed of progress.
Upcoming work, especially within our IT transformation program, will continue to improve timeliness.
Open cases at 30 June
Open cases by age
|
Age |
2018–19 1 |
2019–20 |
2020–21 |
2021–22 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
0–30 days old |
7,181 |
7,619 |
5,277 |
6,139 |
|
31–60 days old |
3,312 |
3,982 |
3,110 |
3,501 |
|
61–180 days old |
4,102 |
4,568 |
4,530 |
4,099 |
|
181–365 days old |
776 |
1,926 |
2,014 |
2,027 |
|
More than 365 days old |
0 |
1,618 |
1,492 |
2,060 2 |
Open cases by stage of the process they are at
|
Stage |
2018–19 1 |
2019–20 |
2020–21 |
2021–22 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
At Registration |
5,338 |
8,968 |
5,904 |
7,567 |
|
At Case Management |
6,943 |
6,558 |
6,171 |
6,812 |
|
At Rules Review |
1,168 |
632 |
646 |
712 |
|
Preliminary Assessment |
1,348 |
2,147 |
1,911 |
1,449 |
|
Decision |
574 |
1,408 |
1,791 |
1,286 |
Open cases by product type 3
1 AFCA commenced on 1 November 2018. The 2018–19 financial year covers an 8-month period (from 1 Nov 2018 to 30 Jun 2019). Year-on-year changes between 18–19 and 19–20 have been calculated pro rata using monthly averages.
2 This number has increased due to the number of cases that have been paused due to insolvency or litigation through the courts.
3 Additional complaints have products yet to be determined or belong to other categories. Complaints may also belong to more than one product type.
